Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire

by Wayne Koestenbaum

Book Overview

This passionate love letter to opera, lavishly praised and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award when it was first published, is now firmly established as a cult classic. In a learned,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679749853
• ISBN13: 9780679749851
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Me LikEy..

Me likey the book, me likey Gays in Opera cause no one writes about (see "Opera: The Undoing of Women; Catherine Clement) them.And Opera, Callas singing Delibes Laksme is good. It's good someone talks about how Gays like Opera, otherwise straight corporate society would think they were the only cultured ones,..Yep, Me like.

Theory on a High Note

The Queen's Throat is an insightful and animated blend of knowledge and intuition exploring the connections and overlappings of homosexuality and opera, arriving at a number of intriguing conclusions. The core of opera's queerness is dismantled and reassembled with a reflective and lyrical precision that defies typical essay format and approach. This is a brilliant monologue -- a very entertaining brainstorm which even includes silly graphics. It's smart, funny, personal, and spirited and even of interest for the operatically challenged. In fact, I bet big opera fans would give this a five.

Queenly Insights

The author is sometimes outrageous yet outspoken in some of his assumptions and observations about those who attend and enjoy opera and those singers and other musicians who perform these works. Some may disagree vehemently with some or all of his consclusions, but no one who reads this book will be without an opinion - either agreeing wholeheartedly with the author or having a "hissy fit" over his "over-the-top" arguments and perceptions. It is amusingly illustrated with occasionally very droll captions to go with the archival photos. On the whole, this book is a pleasant diversion for before-bed reading and may keep you from falling asleep with some of the author's "apercus" in mind

Intense!

This is daring, high-wire exploratory literature of the most beguiling kind. Much more than a reach into the mystery-laden world of one aspect of gay culture, though it is that as well, this is a book about desire, about the fantastical meanings within music, about enslavement and redemption. I read the book in one sitting. It's a devastating piece of prose writing, it gleams and pulls you awake with pins! It is a riveting exposition of the extravagance of sexuality, of sexual desire as metaphor for psychological neglect, an enticing and bewitching brew of fantasy and sorrow. Koestenbaum is in sublime command of his thought, the language is both startling and voluptuous, operatic, really. In Chapter 4, entitled "The Callas Cult", he begins one paragraph "Worshipping Callas, am I behaving like a vulture?" After thoroughly examining the widespread, unreasoned obsession with Maria Callas, he concludes "But it's impossible to circumscribe love. As a commentator, one can only operate like a skylight at a premiere, advertising a location." The mastery of prose throughout is never anything short of brilliant, and is often ecstatic, so that the book's 'colors' dip inevitably toward the mystical, the ineffable. I think it is a complete triumph, a masterfully accomplished piece of unforgettable literature. Highest recommendation.

Opera Fans, Take Note

Koestenbaum has crafted an insightful if sometimes academic work in "The Queen's Throat." He charts the peculiar affinity between gay men and the opera, a relationship he believes begins with an "outsider" sensibility that the sexuality and the musical genre share, and along with that a love of artifice.So far so good, but the book hits rough going about two thirds of the way through when Koestenbaum enters that stream of thought loosely housed under the heading of "deconstruction." Central to the decon. canon is the impossiblity of separating art and politics, and opera as well as gayness are for the author "subversive." I read a lot of gender studies/ feminist thought and even so, I found his line of reasoning rough going. "The Queen's Throat" is worthwhile, but a carefree night at the opera, it ain't.